I invite everybody to discuss ViSa Expansion Pack 3 balance issues and general likes/dislikes in this thread...not bugs please.

Reserved for Future.

Reserved...

Actually having a fun game so far. A fun anti-Barbarian game now with 2 units with 100 XP max (even w/o Barracks +XP bug!). Haven't had any problems really yet (knock on wood). Interesting with more XP points! Can't wait to try out Drill Sergeant and other new features. Early balance feels better.

Playing w/ Earth-like map script, Large size, Polish CIV on Prince level. What happened to the Settings screen I think was a tab under F8 screen?

My poor system is a 796 MB RAM w/ Intel 64MB Graphics card; not a speedy one, but keeps on going! Will be upgrading soon to better play this MOD!

it might just be good/bad luck, depending on your point of view, but the slowest gamespeed (2500 turns, forgot the name) seems to be waaaaay unbalanced. playing on a huge map (pangae) with 7 civs on monarch, 3plot-radius but otherwise pretty much standard rules, i got to build every single wonder except the lighthouse (admittedly I played an industrial nation, but still...), founded 6 out of 7 religions (though neither religious nor scientific) and had everyone either eliminated or as my vassal by 300 BC. by 1 AD my research progress was well past flight and if I can find the motivation to continue this game I'll probably land on alpha centauri before 100 AD.
I think the reason is that city-growth seems to be much too fast (cities with more than 30 pop in the BC-area?). huge populations combined with what I'd consider pretty much the only weak point of VISA - namely an over-abundance of ressources for cheap health/happiness-boosters seems to lead to much fast than expected industrial & technological growth.

anyone experienced something similar?

PS: the AI doesn't seem to do so well under these conditions: no matter what the characteristics of the opposing leaders or which nations they played, all did equally bad, none had the slightest chance to keep up.

might try a deity-level game with these settings - maybe finally a way to stand my ground in one of those ;)

it might just be good/bad luck, depending on your point of view, but the slowest gamespeed (2500 turns, forgot the name) seems to be waaaaay unbalanced. playing on a huge map (pangae) with 7 civs on monarch, 3plot-radius but otherwise pretty much standard rules, i got to build every single wonder except the lighthouse (admittedly I played an industrial nation, but still...), founded 6 out of 7 religions (though neither religious nor scientific) and had everyone either eliminated or as my vassal by 300 BC. by 1 AD my research progress was well past flight and if I can find the motivation to continue this game I'll probably land on alpha centauri before 100 AD.
I think the reason is that city-growth seems to be much too fast (cities with more than 30 pop in the BC-area?). huge populations combined with what I'd consider pretty much the only weak point of VISA - namely an over-abundance of ressources for cheap health/happiness-boosters seems to lead to much fast than expected industrial & technological growth.

anyone experienced something similar?

PS: the AI doesn't seem to do so well under these conditions: no matter what the characteristics of the opposing leaders or which nations they played, all did equally bad, none had the slightest chance to keep up.

might try a deity-level game with these settings - maybe finally a way to stand my ground in one of those ;)

It might be off a bit, but not that much. And you and the AI have the same settings if you are on Noble.

Although Grand is a tough one to balance as my PC's don't have the horsepower....yet....

It might be off a bit, but not that much.
well - I played on monarch(!) and found the game easier than prince-level games - and probably even easier than noble at faster speeds.

If I find the time next week, I might try another one this week, to see if it was just a fluke or if it happens consistently.

well - I played on monarch(!) and found the game easier than prince-level games - and probably even easier than noble at faster speeds.

If I find the time next week, I might try another one this week, to see if it was just a fluke or if it happens consistently.

We only tested Noble level....so not sure about others....

Okay, so, enjoyable mod so far.
But there's one problem.. what on earth is this Strike business about?
Here I am minding my own business running a happy, prospering civ when suddenly I get the message "You units are on strike!" and immediately go into negative income with no way to fix it. This strike went on and on until all my units disbanded due to no funds. There's no reason given for this event and seemingly no way to end it, it basically finished my game.

Actually I'm assuming this is part of the mod since I've never encountered it before after months and months of playing Civ IV. Forgive me if I'm mistaken.

@Antittype Cylon: This Strike you are referring to is when you do not have enough income for the units and buildings. It is not ViSa specific. Its regular civ 4 and warlords feature. You just need to make more income to stop the strike. Change your city to make more money and build buildings that increase your money supply.

@santoo, I am currently playing a game on prince level. I have found that i can not keep up with the AI and its research. So i went to war to get the techs i cant research fast enough. What are you finding on monarch level?

@Antittype Cylon: This Strike you are referring to is when you do not have enough income for the units and buildings. It is not ViSa specific. Its regular civ 4 and warlords feature. You just need to make more income to stop the strike. Change your city to make more money and build buildings that increase your money supply.

I have to agree....unless some strange part of a modcomp we added is doing something strange, but I doubt it.

And I have ran 100's of test games and all I saw was the usual disband of troops when treasury runs low, so decrease the science and/or cultural rates.

@santoo, I am currently playing a game on prince level. I have found that i can not keep up with the AI and its research. So i went to war to get the techs i cant research fast enough. What are you finding on monarch level?

I got up to a rather good start with 2 free techs from goodie huts and another from the oracle. I researched more or less straight for horsearcher and eliminated my nearest opponent - which was lagging behind in the tech race, but had researched along different paths - so add another 3 or 4 (?) techs. i continued war iirc against the next opponent (+2 techs?; not sure, maybe he stared the war?) and was weeeell ahaead of everyone at the end - but also LOST cash even at 0% tech rate. (overexpansion) fortunately my war-earnings were enough to support me until i reached currency - and that coupled with my civivs, all the wonders, some ressource-for-cash-deals, and my religious earnings allowed me to get back up to ~80% tech. by that time, none of the AIs had even remotely catched up - and with my now heavily increased population, they were falling even further back. i went for guilds (a little slower than i could have, as i wanted to save some cash) and decided against tech-whoring (as the AIs hadn't much gold anyway) then waged a rather lengthy war against AI 3. just short of it's elimination it turned a vassal of AI 4, so i was forced to continue my war - which wasn't a problem militaryly, as AI4 was wayyy behind, but became a heavy burden on my cashflow, so i accepted AI4 as my vassal before i would capture all of his cities but run out of cash.
with 2 (3 if you count my vassal) AIs left, me controlling ~4/5 of landmass and population, as well as profiting from techs-by-conquest and being the only one with the option to tech-trade (which i for once didn't) the game was pretty much decided. although i had no open borders (tech leak) and had attacked "innocent" AIs at least twice, the remaining civs rather liked me (thanks to my glorious religion and the ressource-for-cash-deals).
deciding not to end the game so early on i focused on social/economic advances and once again got to a (small) profit at 95% tech rate. by then i was rather bored, as i had little to do, so i went for military tradition and blasted AI5 (1 city left, vassal) and AI6 (1 city left, peace - otherwise the game would have ended). at that time, i had researched all the way to flight, while the 2 vassal civs and the 1 "free" civ hadn't yet mastered music(!!).
of course it's obvious they can't keep up in the end with just 1 city (and me sneakily sabotaging their tile-improvements around that city just for fun *hehe*), but there was no point in the game where any of them were a challenge, technologically speaking.

that game was definitely not a typical monarch-game for me - at slower speeds I find it really tough keeping up at that difficulty (which is why i have had open borders and went for guilds as fast as possible in every single other monarch-game)

I'd like to add my 2 cents on the speed issue. I usually play the second longest(1250 turns) game on large/huge maps, and I almost always find myself with tanks at ca 1500 AD.

There's also the Representation issue I mentioned in the Bugs thread, where I can get insane amounts of research and tax and production simply by using Representation and Apprenticeship civics with maybe Caste System put into the mix, and then assigning 8-10 engineers in each city, and if the city got couple of food resources I can fit in a few researchers as well.

cheers!

I almost always find myself with tanks at ca 1500 AD.
may I ask which difficulty you play? I find slower monarch games rather well paced (tanks maybe in the 1800s, but usually not earlier)


There's also the Representation issue I mentioned in the Bugs thread

i see what you mean - but I'd think it would only be a "problem" if you have rather few cities, as representation only benefits your 6(?) biggest cities. as soon as your empire grows to a certain size, it loses it's effectiveness compared to other civics, so i thought it was a balance-decission to help small civs keep up with bigger ones?

dakh,

we need to make much tweaks on the civics...noone have yet to play with it -
so i hope for the patch it will be more tweaked.

@ Santoo: I play on Prince usually, so I guess that's the reason then. Perhaps it's time to move up to Monarch? :)

But I meant the +3 research per specialist, which is an applied bonus regardless how many cities I have. But again, my play style might be the "problem" as well, as I usually just found 5-6 cities on the best locations possible as soon as I have the settlers for it, then concentrating on development. Getting Pyramids is of course a high priority for me... :)

@ keldath: Yep, I realize that there are some balancing to be done. Are there any plans on putting restrictions on civic choices? I mean, Police State and Free Speech; State Property and Private Schools doesn't have the correct 'ring' to it if you know what I mean? ;)


edit: Oh, and I think some of the vanilla leaders and civs needs some tuning, such as the unique buildings of the Albanians and the Koreans (40% research +2 Priests vs. 35% research), and Stock Exchange vs. Riksbank (England and Sweden). There might be a broader balance issue here than simply Unique Buildings, but I felt that I just had to point it out. ^^

edit 2: Fixed speeling erorss.

I really dislike the fact that you cannot build your state religion missionaries under theocracy. To me, Theocracy is the path towards religious victory (dedicating your entire population to one religion) but at the same time you cannot spread your religion anywhere else. I would suggest the ability to still build your state religion missionaries only or Inquisitors can spread religion as well.

I also dislike the fact you can only build cathedral-type religious buildings if you have Hereditary Rule.

I love Urban Planners, starting new cities with a lot of basic buildings and population 4...could this be reflected in Sea Cities as well, give them a bit of a boost in the beginning.

I think the ethnicity of cities is somewhat off...I can start new cities completely within my own borders and it starts off with less than 50% of my civ ethnicity in it. Also, I seem to get lots of unhappiness from "Yearn to join the Motherland" on cities that were always mine (not conquered) nor are under threat from another civ's cultural borders. I know the ethnicity bleeds through trade routes, but it is rather excessive in my opinion.

I really dislike the fact that you cannot build your state religion missionaries under theocracy. To me, Theocracy is the path towards religious victory (dedicating your entire population to one religion) but at the same time you cannot spread your religion anywhere else. I would suggest the ability to still build your state religion missionaries only or Inquisitors can spread religion as well.

I also dislike the fact you can only build cathedral-type religious buildings if you have Hereditary Rule.

I love Urban Planners, starting new cities with a lot of basic buildings and population 4...could this be reflected in Sea Cities as well, give them a bit of a boost in the beginning.

I think the ethnicity of cities is somewhat off...I can start new cities completely within my own borders and it starts off with less than 50% of my civ ethnicity in it. Also, I seem to get lots of unhappiness from "Yearn to join the Motherland" on cities that were always mine (not conquered) nor are under threat from another civ's cultural borders. I know the ethnicity bleeds through trade routes, but it is rather excessive in my opinion.

I haven't tested it yet, but I believe the Missionaries issue with Theocracy is solved by removing the upgrade to Inquisitors....if not we will get it fixed for v3.10

And civics need much much much help....still looking for suggestions ;)

Good point on Sea Colonies needing a boost.

I believe the religion spread is fixed as well....mrgenie got it working (fully I think) in the upcoming patch v3.10

BTW, any of these entered on the Bug Report site yet?

Thanks TAfirehawk, any comment on the drill sergeant or the "Yearn to Join the Motherland" issue?

I've tried to log these into your bugtracker, but the site freezes up when I try to recover my password :)

Thanks TAfirehawk, any comment on the drill sergeant or the "Yearn to Join the Motherland" issue?

I've tried to log these into your bugtracker, but the site freezes up when I try to recover my password :)

When I have info, I always post it....

The Bug Report site isn't locked up, it just takes 5+ minutes to think :crazyeye:

When I have info, I always post it....

The Bug Report site isn't locked up, it just takes 5+ minutes to think :crazyeye:

And this is the site you keep pushing us to post bug reports in? ;)

I still haven't received my registration confirmation email so I can't see if you are doing anything with respect to the Pitboss problem.

Bernout

And this is the site you keep pushing us to post bug reports in? ;)

I still haven't received my registration confirmation email so I can't see if you are doing anything with respect to the Pitboss problem.

Bernout

You should experience the frustration when we have multiple bug reports to post :) -- Many times it takes longer to post the bug report than it does to fix the problem -- but, flawed though it may be, this is the system and that is where we go to look for problem areas - just bear with the slow upload time and eventually all bugs that can be fixed will be -- thanks :)

Well when reporting bugs, just click submit and then go to another link if not uploading a file...don't wait :lol:

i would be really interested to know, how many of your great persons are prophets/scientists/artist/...?
in every single game i play i get about 60% or more prophets, maybe 10% engineers and 5% each of scientist, artist merchant and statesman. i'd be really lucky to get more than one great doctor.

i'm not sure wheter that's a visa balance-issue - it might be rooted in civ itself, as i got vastly more prophets in vanilla/warlords as well - or it might even be down to my own personal playing-style? how does it work out for you?

PS: pacing: i realise that you only playtest & optimize up to noble - just wanted to let you know, that the pacing in the 2500-turn games really is off (not just a fluke in the earlier monarch game. currently playing deity with modern armors in 300 AD. not just me - the AI as well)

i would be really interested to know, how many of your great persons are prophets/scientists/artist/...?
in every single game i play i get about 60% or more prophets, maybe 10% engineers and 5% each of scientist, artist merchant and statesman. i'd be really lucky to get more than one great doctor.

i'm not sure wheter that's a visa balance-issue - it might be rooted in civ itself, as i got vastly more prophets in vanilla/warlords as well - or it might even be down to my own personal playing-style? how does it work out for you?

PS: pacing: i realise that you only playtest & optimize up to noble - just wanted to let you know, that the pacing in the 2500-turn games really is off (not just a fluke in the earlier monarch game. currently playing deity with modern armors in 300 AD. not just me - the AI as well)

It all depends the wonders you build....I often see all types, especially Statesman now. And Doctors can be gotten from combat, if not in V3.00 it is in V3.10 ;)

I have just put on our test site the total rework of all game speeds except Normal....Grand has seen the biggest change and should be 'fixed' with v3.10.

i would be really interested to know, how many of your great persons are prophets/scientists/artist/...?
in every single game i play i get about 60% or more prophets, maybe 10% engineers and 5% each of scientist, artist merchant and statesman. i'd be really lucky to get more than one great doctor.

This sounds (very much) to me like a play style issue; my own play style leans heavily towards production of Great Scientists - frequently more than four before the BC/AD flip. But as Thunderfall says, it's all dependent on the buildings/wonders/civics you use; when I choose to go another route, it'll be Great Prophets I produce in abundance, or Great Engineers (especially in a game where I go the Great Wall/Pyramids route). I don't often produce many Great Artists (though I'll almost always get the one for Music) or Merchants (likewise for the bonus one from tech - gotta love the science boost from Academies in my best three or four science cities, plus resident Great Scientists!), and almost never Doctors or Statesmen, but I suspect I could alter my style to get those instead.

Actually I just got a Great DOC from early midgame combat (in v3.00) and it was great timing! It would be nice if they were a little easier to get since my favorite GP but rare to get more than one in a whole game for me. The predominate GP for me seems to really vary depending on which wonders I get in which cities that I can actually focus on GP creation. I have had games with lots of Merchants or Prophets, but still seem to vary a lot for me.

Actually I just got a Great DOC from early midgame combat (in v3.00) and it was great timing! It would be nice if they were a little easier to get since my favorite GP but rare to get more than one in a whole game for me. The predominate GP for me seems to really vary depending on which wonders I get in which cities that I can actually focus on GP creation. I have had games with lots of Merchants or Prophets, but still seem to vary a lot for me.

Makes perfect sense....each wonder gives a specific type of GP point(s)....

For example, Stonehenge is ALWAYS +Prophets.

Just gotta say again that I like this mod very much, so thanks yet again for it!

I'm curious as to the opening music. I dig it and it seems familar. And it has a certain kind of sound to it that makes me think of a 1950s or early 60s movie score. Or maybee a TV program from that era? Where is it from?

It's the theme from Thunderbirds.

only flaw of this lovely mod in my opinion ;)

LoL well I like it and I think I will add it to the music queue for the modern age. And for a time I liked the Thunderbirds as well hehe. I finally got to watch it recently when it was rebroadcasted on G4, but I gave up on it after being annoyed by a bunch of trivia data scrolling across the bottem of the screen.

well guys...
i got a new opening music for the coming patch - the theme is perfect to my opinion,
but we are still considering which it will be -

the theme i use now - and again in my idea is awesome and sets well with the opening picture of the ships is:

the theme from die hard 3 - its awessssomeee!!!!

btw - i chose the thunderbirds then....at first it was nice :(

Both the picture and the theme song don't fit this nice mod IMNSHO. They'd be perfect for a mod centered on WW2 or even Vietnam. But IIRC ViSa goes from 4000 BC till 2300? AD. Not from 1940-1960.

I can't think of ANY song that spans the time frame of 4000BC to 2100AD, although I admit my knowledge of songs from 4000BC is somewhat limited....

Alondin the Smartass

Bastian-Bux ...ill try better for v4 :)

I can't think of ANY song that spans the time frame of 4000BC to 2100AD, although I admit my knowledge of songs from 4000BC is somewhat limited....

Alondin the Smartass

Exactly....I suppose if the music is that bad then delete the file or stop playing the mod.

because the time period is so epic Ild suggest having epic music, beathoven or some over classic playing, O Fortuna springs to mind.

Chairman Mao ,
i thought of o fortuna,

but the music wil remain the same for now until we di a mahor update again -
probabley to byond the swords.

we decided to leave the thunderbirds cause its the original choice.